


Red

by chameleontattoos



Series: Wolf & Wildcat [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Post-Dragon Age II Quest - A Bitter Pill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 04:19:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18731461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chameleontattoos/pseuds/chameleontattoos
Summary: Some part of what had happened between Hawke and himself last night - the comfort, the gentleness, the pleasure - had shaken something loose in his head. For a moment he had seen faces, remembered voices. Everything he’d been missing had come back to him. Then he’d blinked, and it was all gone.





	Red

For Fenris, waking up was never a particularly pleasant experience. The veins of lyrium that lined his body made falling asleep in the first place a struggle, and he often found himself jolting awake of a morning with what felt like scores of needles lancing his spine.

He lay there for a moment, staring at the elegantly patterned ceiling and trying not to feel the pain scraping up and down his back every time he breathed.

The ceiling of Hawke’s room was considerably nicer than that of the sitting room in which Fenris usually passed his nights, curled up on a faded lounge. The smoke- and wine-stains rather detracted from the elegant shapes printed on the wallpaper. He’d always found the idea of wallpapering a ceiling to be slightly absurd. Stencils seemed much more practical, and less liable to coming unstuck and interrupting your sleep in the middle of the night.

Hawke slept soundly beside him still. He’d never noticed before, but she had this way of making it seem like she was smiling, even when she wasn’t. The amused slant to her lips was absent while she was so dead to the world; he’d had to see it gone to know that it was ever there to begin with. Fenris found himself missing it. Even last night, in the middle of everything, she’d still - Ah.

Last night.

Some part of what had happened between Hawke and himself last night - the comfort he’d felt just being near her, the gentleness of her fingers on his skin, the pleasure so intense that he could swear he went blind for a handful of seconds - had shaken something loose in his head. For a moment he had seen faces, remembered voices. Everything he’d been missing had come back to him. Then he’d blinked, and it was all gone.

He reached for the memories, hoping to turn them over and inside out until he finally had some answers. He’d already tried once, after Hawke had fallen asleep. But just as before, there was nothing but a fog. Empty space. To have even the slightest idea of where he had come from, only for it to disappear again so completely…

Fenris had not known true fear in years. He didn’t know when his fear of Danarius had been superseded by his anger and determination to outlast every torture that Fade-slug of a magister had put him through. All he knew was that it had been a long time since he had been overcome by that primal need to hide. To run.

He was _not_ afraid. What was there for him to be scared of? But he was… anxious. Unbalanced. And it was producing the same desire to just _get away_. It didn’t seem to matter that this enemy, rather than being a megalomaniacal magister, was his own Void-touched brain.

Fenris grumbled a string of his most colourful curses as he rolled out of Hawke’s bed - partly motivated by the very unwelcome tornado of emotions swirling around in his head and his gut, and partly because getting up was making the markings scream.

He could not stay in that house; of that he was certain. He needed to clear his head, get some distance from -

Hawke.

Fenris buried his bare toes in the rug, squared his shoulders and turned to look at her over his shoulder. He’d be lying if he said that he didn’t find her breathtaking. Nobody could ever hope to be her equal.

She’d broken a slaver’s fingers for striking a young boy just last week. Utterly magnificent.

“Focus, Fenris,” he muttered. Leave. He needed to leave.

His armour still sat, laid out piece by individual piece, on top of Hawke’s writing desk. She had stood by it and watched him as he was watching her, taking each item from him as he removed it, smoothing her fingers almost reverently over the moulding and placing it carefully down. His breastplate had been propped up against the wall like some kind of crest. He’d held his breath for the inevitable comments on the lyrium, but none had come. He’d watched her eyes move over them, following their burning lines from his chin and down, and seen… No pity. Nor hunger, nor lust. Fenris had butted heads with a few single-minded delights of humanity who looked at him and saw something – not even a person, a _thing_ to indulge themselves with. But not Hawke. In Hawke’s eyes, he had seen _sympathy_. And _care_. She’d asked him if they were causing him pain and he’d been compelled to tell her the truth. The constant buzzing under his skin was… Manageable, in that moment. Tolerable.

Not so this morning. The lyrium shrieked, and continued to shriek, as he pulled on his breeches and buckled the rest of his armour. He gritted his teeth against the pain and tightened the fastenings. When he was fully dressed, he gripped the desk, breathing deeply, until the stinging ache subsided.

His fingers seemed to catch on something as he straightened. Lifting his hands, Fenris saw that he had scored the fine wood with his metal claws. He sighed, hanging his head. What was that, if not further evidence that he was not stable enough to be so close to Hawke? There was too much happening in his head. He just… couldn’t.

Out of the corner of his eye, Fenris caught a glimpse of a scrap of red. He pushed away from the desk and approached, keeping an ear out for if Hawke should wake while he was snooping in her belongings.

It was a scarf, hanging out of an exceptionally gaudy chest. Not the sort of thing he would have expected Hawke to have in her sleeping quarters; the chest must have come with its contents already within.

Lifting the lid enough to free the red square of silk, he pulled the scarf through his fingers, listening to the faint hiss of the fabric as it ran over the metal of his gauntlets. The colour of it reminded him of Hawke’s warpaint - that single stripe across the bridge of her nose, as red as fresh blood, that called attention to her eyes. He supposed that was what had drawn him to it in the first place. It reminded him of Hawke, as so many things did these days.

Fenris was not normally given to acting on impulse. At least, not when his life wasn't at stake. The amount of power quite literally buried under his skin necessitated a great deal of self-control. But it was such a simple matter to loop the scarf around his wrist that he barely noticed he was doing it until it had been done. And an impulse it may have been, but he found that the sight of it tied securely there was… actually a comfort. A small piece of Hawke to keep with him, to mark him as her man. To show _her_ that while he may have been too great a coward to keep her close, she would always have his loyalty.

An insidious little voice in the corner of his mind whispered about _moving from one master to another_. But this was not the same. Hawke had said herself that Fenris was no slave to her wishes. He was free to choose whom he served, and he had chosen Hawke.

His eyes drifted of their own accord to where she lay, still asleep. He would stay here until she roused, long enough to offer some small explanation. Then he would make his escape.

He wasn’t sure how long he waited for Hawke to wake, in truth. Minutes might have passed, or hours. He had become rather good at standing and staring at nothing during his years in Tevinter. It was an effective way to pass time when he was not being called on to perform some task or trick or guard duty for Danarius, and it meant that when he finally heard Hawke stirring among her bedclothes it felt as though he had been blankly regarding the fire for no longer than a blink.

Fenris twitched an ear, listening to the sounds of her slowly waking up without turning from the fireplace.

"Fenris?"

He turned to face her, endeavouring not to hide his pinched expression. He was planning to run, that much was true, but he wouldn’t deliver her a fiction before he did so.

It took her only a moment to see his discomfort. "What happened, Fenris? Are you alright? Did someone-"

"Last night," he cut in, "I began to… remember."

Hawke sat up and crossed her legs, leaning forward in interest. "Remember? As in…?"

Fenris nodded. "Faces. Voices. From before the ritual."

"You don't sound particularly happy about this development." Hawke observed, cocking her head. "I hear a _but_ coming."

"The memories, they - they were there, and then gone."

"Gone?"

He nodded again, not entirely sure how to proceed, rubbing his forehead with the flat side of his gauntlet.

"You won't be staying for breakfast, I take it." The way she said it made it sound more a statement than a question. More than just _breakfast_ , too.

"No. I… can't. It's too much. Too fast." Fenris looked down at her apologetically. "I'm sorry."

It was Hawke who nodded silently this time. Her eyes roved over his face, then lower; they landed on the band of red around his wrist, briefly lingering there. He worried for a moment how she would react. He _had_ taken it without asking; she might want it returned. But then she looked back up at him, and he felt that he saw nothing in those eyes but simple acknowledgement. Possibly also approval, although that was probably just wishful thinking on his part.

She didn’t speak again until he had his sword strapped to his back. "Just don't go running off and finding a mess to dive into without me, alright? Any jobs you find, I want in."

Fenris bowed slightly at the waist, fighting the urge to kneel on the floor beside her bed like a Chantry supplicant and thank her for not pushing him away entirely. He would have deserved it. "I remain at your side."

Then he turned on his heel, and he left.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This is my first attempt at Fenris/Hawke, and my first attempt at Fenris' POV, so please do leave a comment and tell me how I did!


End file.
